This is a guided loving-kindness meditation for cultivating a stronger sense of self-esteem and self-love. While loving-kindness meditations vary widely depending on the instructor's or practitioner's references, they always involve extending well-wishes. The person to whom you extend the well-wishes and what they are depend on the meditation's purpose. In this meditation, you will start by extending the four well-wishes that Sophie has chosen to someone you care about and then to yourself. We do this because extending the well-wishes to yourself first may be too challenging if your self-esteem is low. Starting with someone important to you may ease the process. The author has also changed the typical phrasing of the well-wishes from, for example, "may you be safe" to "may you feel safe" since it is possible to be safe, loved, etc. and not feel like you are.
Loving-kindness meditations originated in the Buddhist meditation technique metta bhavana. However, the technique is not necessarily religious. This recording does not use any religious or spiritual language. All meditations produced by Sophie Grace Meditations are written to fit everyone, regardless of whether you consider yourself religious or atheistic. Science has shown that simply imagining you extend well-wishes to others in a relaxed state can increase your capacity for empathy and love, make you feel happier and more peaceful, and have measurable positive effects on your physical health in as few as six weeks.
Sophie Påhlsson, the person behind Sophie Grace Meditations, is a Swedish meditation instructor who started writing guided meditations for personal use because she found that the market in Sweden lacked the content she wanted to listen to. Since Sophie Grace Meditations released her first products, they have collectively been streamed and bought over one million times.
